Redshirts - meta scifi novel by John Scalzi. Fun and easy read, although I think I raised my expectations a bit too high seeing the awards it had won (Hugo, Lotus, Geffen).

Premise: (big spoiler, but it's the crux of the book and revealed fairly early)

I'm a little over 150 pages into Joe Abercrombie's first book The Blade Itself and while it's been nice getting to know the characters and the world it's starting to become a bit redundant and I'm ready for something to actually happen

It's been years since I read it, but from what I can recall that is his first book and by far the weakest. He's an extremely fast writer and seems to have largely learned while publishing stories. Sorry if I steered you wrong, hopefully it improves soon.

Oh no not at all! I'm a completionist so would have started with book 1 no matter what if the series was highly recommended. I did that with the Jo Nesbo series. I was told book 1 was terrible. Book 1 was indeed terrible and unlike this series (which I wouldn't call terrible) book 1 really wasn't relevant to the rest of the Nesbo series. If anything it's comforting to hear book 1 wasn't the best and gives me even more motivation to plow forward with First Law and get deeper into this world. Again it's by no mean bad just a little bit of a slow cooker

I can't say I remember exactly either, but, for me, Abercrombie really shines with his characters - their development and interactions, so wouldn't surprise me if the first book is a lot of building up that.

The world and story are more generic (not a criticism in any way, just the way it is with a lot fantasy), compared to someone like Sanderson, who's a beast at world-building. If you have time to kill, he's even done a lecture on it.

Yea im excited to keep reading Abercrombie and I've been reading a bit everyday. I'm fairly new to "fantasy" and this is good for me. The only previous fantasy I read was the Locke Lamora trilogy which just moved much faster (except for 2/3 of book 2 which was the actual WOAT). With First Law being 6 books was hoping I didn't have to wait too long. I realize it came off as a complaint but wasn't meant to. Guess I was just looking for some reassurance lol

The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, by Leigh Montville.

Everything you want and don’t want to know about The Babe. Interesting read and not overblown and the author admits that somethings about The Babe’s personal life are shrouded in “fog” (and not particularly flattering). His baseball life is of course a true legend with a light frosting of Myth.

Book came out in 2006, well researched. All Baseball fans should enjoy it I think.

Oh that's great to hear. I did the same with malazan. The first book is pretty horrible but read it all to get to the rest.

Haven't read a Dame Agatha in forever [probably 3 decades?], reading Crooked House which she said was her favorite and usually in the top 5 in fan favorite polls.

I was sufficiently disappointed in it that I've given his novels a pass.

I've read the one about the elevators and liked it, but that's all I've read.

Einstein had a thing about elevators.

They go up, down and sideways. Einstein was right.

Halfway through Neal Stephenson's latest, Termination Shock, and really enjoying it. I'm a fan of Stephenson though I get that he's not for everyone, I think with him you have to enjoy the journey so if you're someone who reads a story purely to find out what happens at the end you'll probably get frustrated by his overly in depth descriptions of places and people and their histories.

TS is, as is usual from Stephenson, pretty epic in scope with multiple threads of the story happening across the globe. The basic premise is that a billionaire Texan decides to take matters into his own hands wrt global warming and pump a ton of sulphur into the atmosphere to cool it (apparently this is a known possible solution to global warming, it's just unpopular because knock on effects are hard to judge.) The book is mostly about the geopolitical fallout from this as some countries stand to benefit massively while other places could suffer.

Also enjoyed this podcast he did about related ideas with Lex Fridman if anyone is interested.

love stephenson, ty for the rec

Really enjoyed this one. Very funny.

+1 to Rick's post

Started last night...seems promising.

I've only read 2 Stephenson books (Snow crash and SevenEves) but enjoyed both immensely

Cryptonomicon was incredible.

Took a break and read a John Grisham novel: The Judge’s List. It’s every bit of what you would imagine from JG, a welcome change from my usual pile of nonfiction. Was nice to get lost in a crime drama.

I'm filled with envy and resentment for anyone with the attention span and general reading stamina to get through even a single page of Neal Stephenson's, much less a whole book of his, much less several books!

I'm rereading (really listening this time) to Nathan Hill's The Nix. It's very good and reminds me a lot of John Irving's best novels.

Underland: A Deep Time Journey - Robert Macfarlane
Fascinating book following Macfarlane as he travels the globe for ten years exploring various underground systems, and how we are changing the planet and its effects on them.

I'm going to start this tomorrow. I loved The Old Ways, but didn't know about Underland.

I did a tour of Hell with Satan. Best underland adventure available. Highly recommend and Very entertaining!

I took a tour of Hell with Satan, but the whole thing took place at the Atlanta airport. Really looking forward to going Underground.

I am reading now "A Little Hatred" by Joe Abercrombie.

Not bad, but I liked the previous books of the series more.